Standing among nearly 200 packed into a closed courtyard on Grandravine Dr. — children, teens and adults alike wearing t-shirts that scream “R.I.P.” for two slain teens — their voices cut through the impossible silence.

As the songs fade before sunset in the housing complex, a woman wails one question, over and over: “Why?”

In this Jane and Finch community, four friends — 15, 15, 16 and 15 — have been shot and killed this year within blocks of each other. Since 15-year-old Jordan Manners was gunned down inside C.W. Jefferys C.I. six years ago, there have been 10 homicides of youth under 19 in the Jane and Finch area — twice many as any other community in the city. That troubling concentration, and a recent upswing in violence police say is gang-related, may once again signal that Jane and Finch is by raw numbers the most dangerous place to be a kid.

“Every child, I think, should have the right to be able to walk or be able to visit their friends at 1:30 in the afternoon without being gunned down,” mother Stephanie Whyte said Wednesday at a vigil for her 16-year-old son, O’She Doyles-Whyte.

Doyles-Whyte was gunned down with friend Kwame Duodu, 15, in the middle of the afternoon on Aug. 23.

“I shouldn’t have to be worried that my other two kids, when they go outside, ... that they might not come back. And this is a fear that I have to live with.”

A law of their own

Devon Jones, a teacher and youth mentor in Jane-Finch, said youth are being lost to the periphery — a dangerous reality of rules and norms they’ve created for themselves on the streets.

And it’s not only Jane and Finch. Since 2007, 72 other youth aged 11 and 19 have been killed in the city — nearly all by gun violence. That total expands to 105 deaths if those aged 20 and 21 are included.

“In the streets, they’re 15 in number but they’re not really 15,” Jones said. “The youth issue is the competing narrative ... Too many of these kids are being pulled to the periphery. And once they get there, it’s only the police then that deal with them.”

In the wake of Manners’ high-profile death, the first inside a Toronto school, the Jane-Finch community saw an influx of city grants and private donations — as well as special policing initiatives. Youth homicides at Jane and Finch then decreased gradually until this year, which has already had four.

“To a certain extent, I think both policing and community initiatives may have caused a temporary drop in homicide,” said University of Toronto criminologist Scot Wortley. “I guess one of the worries now is that after this initial funding period, has that funding to a certain extent dried up?”

He said most researchers would conclude that without comprehensive community development — housing, healthcare and education — there will never be a permanent decrease in violent crime.

“You really do need some kind of coordinated, permanent, institutional effort to address the issues in these communities and give kids hope,” Wortley said. Part of the concern, he said, is many youth raised at Jane and Finch start at the bottom in terms of social disadvantage and lack faith that they can succeed — or ever leave those physical boundaries.

“It’s one of the things we’re seeing develop at a very young age,” Wortley said. “A lot of these perceptions are rooted in reality ... How do you convince young people to forget about that?”

Timeline: Youth homicides in Jane-Finch community

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A look at youth homicides in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood since 2007.

The slain boys and their friends on Twitter often messaged each other in flurries, frequently posting about the things that consume teenage life, like buying their first cars and finishing high school.

But their posts are also peppered with humble requests and persistent grief.

“GOD please let me see my 17th Birthday,” one wrote last week.

A police perspective

In the office of Deputy Chief Peter Sloly, who oversees teams such as the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), there is a stylized map of Toronto’s neighbourhoods hanging above that of the force’s 17 divisions.

As a cop who spent several patrol years in the troubled Flemingdon Park, he knows there is no simple solution to violence and crime prevention in the city’s “priority” neighbourhoods.

Sloly said August traditionally sees a lot of violence. But when things refused to stabilize mid-month, officers became concerned. They identified the problem as cross-boundary gang violence in three northwest divisions: 12, 23 and 31, which incorporates Jane and Finch.

The shooting death of 15-year-old Tahj Loor-Walters on Aug. 13 was the tipping point for police commanders who had been working on a project to step up police presence, to “cool things down.” The project was to kick off Aug. 23.

“The briefing of the team of officers we pulled together was to be at 4 o’clock of that afternoon, and at 1:30 the two boys were shot,” Sloly said. “The outrageous, brazen execution of these two kids, it’s shaken that community to its roots, and it’s shaken us.”

Though it’s impossible to know if police could have prevented the second shooting, Sloly said: “All of us wish we had this project up the day before.”

Map: Jane and Finch shootings

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A look at shootings in the Jane and Finch area in July and August.

Even as homicide investigators looked for clues around Grandravine Dr. that night, another shooting incident broke out in a neighbouring Rexdale division.

Since the start of the project, police have seized several weapons and arrested several people believed to be problem gang members, Sloly said. But it is not yet clear what stoked the violence.

If you look at raw numbers, Jane and Finch is once again the most dangerous place to be a kid, he agreed — even more than Rexdale, which has seen six youth deaths since 2007; Malvern, with 5; or Regent Park, 3. He said the pattern of Jane and Finch and adjacent neighbourhoods housing a disproportionate concentration of guns, gangs and drugs hasn’t changed since Manners’ death.

Though it’s no comfort to victims’ families, Sloly said, violent crime is decreasing city-wide. In the North York division that includes Jane-Finch, shootings are down from 34 in 2010 to 24 so far this year.

But he said policing initiatives won’t end Jane and Finch’s problems.

“The police don’t see ourselves as the solution to this issue,” he said. “It’s not going to solve the problems that cause guns and gangs and drugs and the violence that we’ve seen, in terms of 15-year-olds being shot.”

A community program perspective

Since 2006, the city maintains funding has been relatively stable for community grants in the Jane-Finch area. Nine programs were funded with a total of more than $640,000 this year.

But the community, as the city defines it, is actually broken into four smaller neighbourhoods. In Glenfield-Jane Heights, where all the shootings took place, funding has fluctuated. In 2008, grants totaled more than $300,000. In 2011, they fell below $200,000 — 13th priority, behind others such as Moss Park and Flemingdon Park.

Grants aren’t the only support for community programs; there are also multi-year, time-limited projects and one-time funding from non-profits and private donations, including United Way — $1.5 million since 2006.

Following the landmark 2008 report The Review of the Roots of Youth Violence, by retired justice Roy McMurtry and Dr. Alvin Curling, numerous youth initiatives were created at the provincial and municipal level. In 2012, the province launched the$20 million Ontario Youth Action Plan following shooting tragedies at the Eaton Centre and a Danzig St. public housing complex, which together killed four and left dozens more injured.

But in June, a staff report to city council lamented that the money may not be reaching victims and youth most at risk.

“Despite some strategic youth actions since the McMurtry-Curling Review, there still remains a significant need for a comprehensive, holistic and targeted approach to support youth at high risk of marginalization,” the report stated.

Chris Penrose, executive director of Success Beyond Limits, said it’s hard to measure positive outcomes in any disadvantaged neighbourhood — the success stories they see every year but rarely get reported.

Youth workers like Penrose know best what the community has lost.

Loor-Walters was one of the students who attended Success Beyond Limits programs. Penrose also knew Manners; he remembers both teens as popular and polite. St. Aubyn Rodney, 15, allegedly shot by his best friend in February, was attending the Jane & Finch Boys & Girls Club before he was killed. Doyles-Whyte and Duodu both worked there as mentors before they died.

Penrose said what needs to change is the city’s outlook on Jane and Finch and the people who live there — kids like Manners, Rodney, Loor-Walters, Doyles-Whyte and Duodu.

“Did he belong to Jane and Finch?” Penrose asked. “He was a young person in the city of Toronto. Period ... He’s not somebody else’s kid. He’s our youth. He’s your kid.

“Then the next thing is: OK, that’s heartbreaking. Now what do I do?”

A welcoming place, too

Two days after the vigil at the Oakdale Community Centre, dozens of youth were back Friday for a basketball tournament and barbecue.

Jahvonte Taylor, 12, said he knows people think Jane and Finch is a bad place. But he loves barbecues like this, where each kid was greeted by mentors’ warm hugs and huge smiles as they arrived at basketball courts decorated with balloons and streamers.

“What I like is they focus on the youth,” Taylor said.

Patreka Brown, 16, agreed there aren’t many communities as welcoming or supportive for youth. She might like to be a school psychologist when she graduates from university, to work with youth herself.

“It’s not only bad things,” she said. “A lot of good things come out of the community.”

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Police and community partners discuss whether Jane & Finch is the city's most dangerous neighbourhood to be a kid — and what we should do about it.